Ohio's DeWine Urges Ending Death Penalty After 3 Decades of Support

Q: A lifelong supporter, what finally convinced Ohio's governor the death penalty he helped write must be abolished?

What finally convinced Gov. Mike DeWine was his belief that the death penalty no longer has the moral or practical justification he once saw in it. He said the decisive change came when he concluded, based on the data, that capital punishment does not deter violent crime. Because deterrence had been his core reason for supporting it, he said that justification “no longer exists.” DeWine also pointed to Ohio’s experience showing a system that has become increasingly ineffective. Executions have been on hold since 2018, death sentences have fallen sharply, and the average time between sentence and execution has stretched to roughly 21 to 23 years. In many cases, people sentenced to die are never executed at all, instead dying of natural causes or suicide, which he said makes the punishment more remote and less meaningful with each passing decade. He said those delays also deepen the suffering of victims’ families, who can wait decades without finality, and impose a psychological burden on prison staff involved in executions. He has also cited the practical collapse of lethal injection in Ohio, with drug suppliers unwilling to provide the necessary drugs. Taken together, DeWine’s shift was driven less by a single event than by years of evidence that Ohio’s death penalty is costly, delayed, difficult to carry out, and, in his view, no longer defensible as a crime-prevention tool.

3 articles · Updated · NPR · Jun 20

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said the state should abolish the death penalty, marking a reversal by a Republican who said he once supported the practice.
DeWine framed the shift as a conclusion reached after years of experience with the system, explaining why he no longer backs capital punishment.
The call puts fresh weight behind efforts to end executions in Ohio by aligning abolition with the state's top elected official rather than only outside critics.